by James Axler
“Damn straight. We need more info,” Ryan agreed, smoothing out Texas with his hand. “Bastard lot of territory to recce blind.”
“Sec men know truth,” Jak grunted, glancing upstairs. “Those tubs lard might be spinning shitwebs.” The teenager knew that he could easily force the two men to spill their guts with a hot blade, but that was something he would hold off doing until there was no other choice.
“Hey, we passed a gaudy house down the road,” J.B. said, tilting his head. “There’s always sec men there. It’s only a couple of blocks away, and we do have free rein inside the ville.”
Glancing out the door, Ryan started to speak, and Doc cut off the man. “I shall stay with Dean,” the old man offered. “The establishment in question is too far away for any response from us to be of effective use if there was an altercation.”
“Thanks. Save the MRE packs,” Ryan ordered. “We’ll bring you something for dinner.”
“Anything but dog,” Doc muttered, glancing at the silent office door.
Checking the street outside for any suspicious movement before leaving the motel, Ryan motioned the others forward and they split apart in the deepening darkness. As silent as a ghost, Doc melted into the shadows along the side of the building and was gone from sight. Krysty nodded in approval. The old fellow was getting good at that.
In the night air was a faint reek from the garbage dump behind the motel, but that faded as they crossed the street. From the roofed section of the ville, the lights from the windows were reflected off the rippling cloth, giving the streets a golden hue like something from an old vid. Now there came the aroma of frying peppers mixing with the clean smell of the desert salt. Somewhere a horse whinnied, and there came the crash of pots and pans, followed by raised voices marking a fight. The desert ville was full of life, and the sound of a whip was noticeably absent at the moment.
“It was this way,” Mildred said, checking the map in her notebook.
The companions passed very few people on the streets, a young boy dragging a burlap bag full of sticks, an old woman bundled under a raggedy shawl limping along a side street. Muted voices came from behind the closed shutters, and something flew by overhead, its passage masked by the patched material roofing the ville. Steadily, the temperature dropped as night descended in full, slices of light beaming through the shutters and around closed doors, becoming brighter in the purple dusk. His boots slapping against the cobblestone street, a sec man walked down the center of the street with a longblaster slung over his shoulder, a hand tight on the faded leather strap. He looked hard at the companions, then slowly nodded, granting them passage and kept slowly walking.
Easing his stance, Ryan let go of his grip on the SIG-Sauer and Jak tucked the throwing knife in his hand back up the sleeve of his camou jacket.
“Lot of security here,” J.B. muttered, taking his hand off his slung Uzi. “Everybody seems scared.”
“If the baron is at war with the Trader,” Ryan growled, “they bastard well should be.”
“Roger that.”
Skirting around the temple, the group heard the gaudy house long before they saw the place. Gales of laughter came from the second floor, shadowy figures ran past the louvered shutters, and there was actual glass in the lower windows, showing a roaring fireplace and tables of men eating and drinking. The few women moving through the crowd were scantily dressed.
A group of horses was tied to a stone hitching post, with a lone sec man leaning against it smoking a home-rolled cig. He watched the outlanders cross the street, but said nothing as they passed by, heading for the brothel.
“Must be the designated driver.” Mildred laughed, and waited for a response from the others, then realized the joke was a hundred years out of date. Ah, well.
Stepping through the doorway, Ryan pushed aside a blanket hanging across the opening to help keep out the evening chill. Inside the building, the air was warm and heavy with the smells of food and wood smoke. From the bolt holes in the concrete floor marking where heavy machinery had once been anchored, it was obvious that the place had originally been some sort of factory, now gutted into a single huge room with bare steel beams supporting the second story. Clusters of candles hung from chains attached to the metal rafters, clay bowls underneath positioned to catch drippings so as not to lose a drop of wax. A roaring fireplace was near the wooden counter that served as a bar, with a bubbling iron pot sitting directly amid the crackling flames, the roasted carcass of something slowly turning on a spit.
The tables were mostly cut-down wooden spools that at one time housed industrial cable, the chairs a mixture of anything that could be sat upon, including a flat rock and some plain wooden boxes. Incredibly, over in the far corner a stickie was stuffed and mounted on a wooden box, its eyes replaced with shiny glass marbles, its hands raised as if about to attack. The mutie was wearing pants, but its chest was bare, the mottled skin covered with the puckered scars of large bore bullet holes, along with a stitched slash on its neck that almost went completely across.
“Must been some fight,” Jak muttered.
“Ah, that it was young fellow!” a drunk sec man called out, waving a wooden mug. “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all the details. Lost ten men chilling the bastards, and nearly got caught by the Core!”
“Shut up, fool,” another man hissed, grabbing the arm of his friend and squeezing so hard his knuckles went white.
The drunk went silent and bent over his mug to concentrate on his shine.
The Core, eh? Ryan filed that name away to check into if he got the chance. Maybe that was what the Trader was calling his people these days.
Now voices dropped as the companions made their way through the room heading for an empty table. Taking a seat, Krysty noticed an old brass plaque on the wall, the lettering barely discernable, buried as it was under the accumulation of grease and dirt.
“Rockpoint Nine Relay Station,” Krysty read aloud. “Relay for what, I wonder?”
“No signs of any power lines,” Mildred said, reviewing the ville in her mind. “Might have been a satellite base, or microwave transmission relay for telephones.”
Placing his longblaster on the table in plain sight, Ryan left the table and went to the counter. The man behind the bar was tall and muscular, missing several fingers on his left hand, and his left eye was a marbled white, a long scar going from his forehead, across the dead orb and down to his dimpled chin.
“Lost it in a knife fight, eh?” Ryan said, gesturing at the man’s white scar. “Me, too.”
“But we’re still here and the other fellas ain’t.” The bartender chuckled. “Nice to meet another brother of the blade. I’m Bart. So what do you want, outlander? No eyes for sale today.”
Snorting a laugh, Ryan found himself immediately liking the man. “Just food,” he said, then on impulse reached into a pocket and flipped the man a single .22 cartridge.
The bartender made the catch with both hands and stared at the round of ammo as if it were alive.
“Damn. Prime condition. Stew is on the fire, help yourself,” Bart said, pocketing the round. “Got some roast lizzie, but not much left. If you ain’t got a plate, use a hubber, but then you scrub it clean afterward. Or there’s some flat bread. All you want.”
A hubber, a hub cap for a plate. Glancing at the fireplace, Ryan now saw a battered plastic milk crate stacked with the ornate metal disks bearing car company logos. The companions had military mess kits, but again showing off their wealth in such a poor ville would only start a fight.
“We’ll use the flat bread,” Ryan decided.
A man stumbled at the end of the bar and thumped it with a fist. “Beer!” he called out, slurring the word.
“Smart choice on the flat bread,” Bart said, pulling a chipped ceramic mug from under the counter and dipping it into an open barrel behind the counter. “Most people don’t clean the hubbers so well, and some of them are kinda ripe.”
“Is the bread fresh?” J.
B. asked, joining them at the counter.
Sliding the mug down the counter to the waiting customer, Bart looked hostilely at the man’s glasses.
“He’s with me,” Ryan said, twitching a thumb.
The sec man at the end caught the beer, slopping some of the pale fluid onto himself and the floor, then stumbled away sipping nosily at the mug.
“Fresh? Well, it wasn’t made today,” Bart admitted, wiping his mutilated hands dry on a wet towel tucked into his gun belt. There was no blaster, the holster containing a wooden cudgel instead. “But then, it wasn’t made last moon either. Fresh enough to eat, if you got strong teeth.”
“Anything to drink, Bart?” Ryan asked. This was a technique he had learned long ago. Chat with the bartender, get on his good side and slowly the man would spill the local gossip.
“Beer and shine,” the man growled. “Only water here is reserved for sec men. Ain’t none for sale.”
“That so, brother?” Ryan asked, scratching at his leather eye patch.
Keeping a straight expression, Bart placed a scarred arm on the counter and leaned forward. “Well,” he added softly, “if you pay double the price for shine, there might be water in the mug. Stranger things have happened.”
“Sounds good. A round of shine for the table,” Ryan reached into a pocket and placed a couple of .22 rounds on the counter.
“Nuke me, but you’re packing brass,” Bart said, covering the rounds with a hand and sliding them out of sight. “What are you, the Trader’s bastard?”
“Could be,” J.B. said, resting an arm on the counter and briefly opening his fingers to expose a pile of cartridges. “And if we were looking to avoid that person, which would be the best direction for us not to travel?”
Bart arched an eyebrow at the man and clamped his mouth tight. “I’ll have a girl bring the drinks,” he said woodenly, all traces of friendliness gone.
“Well, that went poorly,” J.B. muttered as they walked away from the counter.
“Gaza has these folks scared to the bone,” Ryan agreed, glancing backward. The bartender avoided his look. “Mebbe we should visit the baron and see what we can learn from him directly.”
“You mean, pretend we’re mercies and try to hire on for the job of chilling the Trader?”
“We’ve done it before.”
“Not always with success,” J.B. stated flatly.
As they crossed the room, a group of sec men watched the companions closely and started to whisper among themselves. Ryan spotted them and marked the group as possible trouble.
Returning to their table, the men told the others what had happened. Just as they finished, some feminine laughter sounded from upstairs and the floor began thumping in a familiar pattern.
“Got idea,” Jak said, inclining his heads toward the stairs. “Go talk girls. Never knew gaudy slut won’t talk for extra jak and no sweating.”
“They’d know everything,” Mildred agreed. “Probably more than the baron does about what was happening in his ville.”
“Food first,” Ryan decided, pulling a box closer to the table. “Going to be a long night, no matter how this goes.”
A girl who looked more like a gaudy slut than a waitress brought over a tray of mugs filled with water and left without saying a word.
“Wait a minute before drinking,” Mildred said, taking a container and sniffing carefully. Lifting the mug to the flickering candlelight, she inspected the coloration of the contents, then dipped in a finger and placed a drop on the back of her hand, then touched the tip of her tongue to the drop.
“Clean,” she announced at last.
“And clear,” Ryan added, checking his rad counter. More than once, they had bought water only to find it hotter than the bottom of a glass lake.
After quenching their thirst, the companions got their food two at a time and settled down to eat. During the meal a few sec men wandered upstairs drunk, and a few came stumbling down the stairs fixing their pants and tucking in their shirts. A bald man stopped near the table and leered at Krysty, but she placed her revolver on the table and he moved off quickly muttering under his breath.
“If Jak gets nothing upstairs,” Ryan stated, laying aside his wooden spoon, “we’ll get back and start work on the wag so it’s ready to leave at dawn.”
“Leave for where?” Krysty said, chewing a mouthful of her stew. There was meat in the mix and some veggies, but also a lot of gritty corn. The kernels had to have been ground between pieces of sandstone. Or house bricks.
“Grandee,” Ryan answered, taking the last chunk of flat bread and stuffing it into his mouth to chew it soft.
“We can use that place near the river as a base to start searching the Deathlands,” he continued after swallowing, “until we find somebody who knows something.”
“Gotta go there anyway,” J.B. agreed, dipping his bread into the water to try to soften the stuff. The bread swelled a little and he chewed it carefully, finding more grit in the flat bread. Damn sand was everywhere. Had to be mighty uncomfortable for the girls working overhead.
“That seems to be our best plan so far,” Mildred said, cleaning her spoon on a spare chunk of bread before tucking the spoon back into her jacket pocket. “I’ll get something for Dean and Doc.” Standing, she checked her blaster, then headed for the fireplace. A couple of the drunks watched her pass, but none of them got in her way.
As Mildred returned with cigarlike rolls of flat bread containing stew, a mature woman come over with a tray of wooden mugs.
“We didn’t order a second round,” Ryan said suspiciously.
As she placed the drinks on the table, he noticed the woman had eyes as blue as topaz, startling in their intensity of color.
“Here you are, sir. Sorry it took so long,” she said loudly, then added in a whisper, “Bart is my husband.”
“Something wrong?” Krysty asked in concern.
“Hell, yes,” she replied quickly, taking the empty mugs and putting them on her tray. It was just a circle of plastic, but seemed to serve well enough. “In this ville asking certain questions get you sent to the temple to feed the Scorpion God. What you were talking about is top round in that mag. Ain’t nobody here going to talk about that person you mentioned. Unless they’re a feeb.”
Well, that certainly covered those two at the motel. “Thanks for the tip,” Ryan said. “Anything else?”
“Oops, sorry,” the woman said for no apparent reason. Then pulling out a rag, she pretended to mop a spill on the dry table. When she took it away there now was a damp circle on the wood with a tail sticking out like the comet. Or a compass heading.
Krysty glanced up at that and emerald green eyes met those of ultrablue. “Understood,” the redhead said, pressing a handful of spare rounds into the pocket of the woman’s apron. “We’ll stay low.”
“Don’t go upstairs, they’re waiting for you. That wag caused a stir here like kicking a hornet’s nest. Everybody wants it to try to escape,” the woman said, turning to leave. “Sorry again. Anything else you need, just ask.”
As the woman returned to the bar, Krysty wiped her hands across the mark obliterating if from the table. “South by southwest,” she said taking a sip of her water, then reacted when she realized the mug was filled with shine. Mother Gaia, it was strong! They could use this to run the wag if necessary.
“Okay, got what we wanted,” Ryan said, standing and hitching his belt. “Let’s go.”
The companions left the gaudy house and hurried up the street, pausing at the sight of the lighted barn, Dean standing in the doorway with a drawn blaster in his hand. Ryan slid the Steyr off his shoulder and worked the bolt. “Hey, Able,” he called out, using their established code, asking if there was an ambush.
“No problems here, Charlie,” the boy answered, giving the prearranged countersign.
The friends entered the barn and found the wag parked exactly where they left it, the nukelamp blazing away. High in the sky, lightning briefly flicker
ed across the black storm clouds drifting among the thick patina of twinkling stars.
“Here you go,” Mildred said, passing over the wrapped stew.
Without a word, Dean tore into it like a wolf and didn’t speak for a few moments.
“Damn, that’s good,” he said at last, coming up to breathe. “Hot pipe, I was starving. What took you long enough? It’s been over two hours, and I was starting to worry.”
“Doc should have told you we were getting food,” Ryan demanded sharply, glancing around. “Where is he, anyway? Taking a nap in the wag?”
Lowering his soggy sandwich, the boy blinked in surprise. “But he’s with you,” Dean said slowly. “I haven’t seen Doc since you left.”
Chapter Twelve
Stepping outside the barn, the companions listened to the ville around them, straining for the faintest cry from the missing man. But the silence was thick, no shouts or sounds of a struggle disturbing the night.
“The peace of a grave,” Ryan spit, unholstering his blaster. “Somebody is playing us for fools. Mildred, J.B., stay here. Krysty, with me. We’ll check the motel, see if Sparrow and Jed are still tied up. Jak, sweep the area for any traces.”
As the man and the woman dashed out of the structure into the dark street, Jak grabbed a nukelamp from the back of the wag. Returning to the street, he started at the front door and began sweeping the blaze of light along the cobblestones.
“Pity we can’t use the wag to search the ville,” Mildred said, glancing longingly at the vehicle. “But that perforated muffler makes so much noise it would announce our presence to deaf people.”
“Any chance you refilled the wag?” J.B. asked, zipping up his leather jacket midway. Away from the canopy, the desert breeze blew strong, seeming to go straight down his collar.
“Sure, not much else to do,” the boy answered while licking his fingers, then wiping his greasy mouth on a sleeve. “Mebbe Doc is just off at the shitters.”
“For two hours?” Mildred shot back incredulously. “Damn well hope not.”
“Could have fallen in,” J.B. said with a frown. “Old wooden planks get weak and it happens sometimes.”
